The Fairy Jar
by Omnicat
Summary: Jane Foster is stuck in a jar, three inches tall and wearing a dress made of flower petals. It's Loki's fault, of course. What else were you expecting? / WORK IN PROGRESS
1. I

**The Fairy Jar**

 _Jane Foster is stuck in a jar, three inches tall and wearing a dress made of flower petals. It's Loki's fault, of course. What else were you expecting?_

 **II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

 _I_

"You must be truly desperate, to come to me for –"

Thor thrust a glass jar in his face. "Your spellwork, you fix it."

Loki went cross-eyed. " _What?_ "

"The lady Jane became ensnared in one of your magical traps. Your spellwork, you fix it," Thor repeated, shaking the jar for emphasis.

The tiny lady in the jar squeaked and flailed as she was thrown about her glass enclosure.

"Do you truly want her fixed or would you rather shake her to death first?"

Thor froze, eyes widening and mouth twisting in a grimace. Very carefully, he removed the jar from Loki's personal space and cradled it to him.

"I am so sorry, Jane. I swear I shan't forget again this time."

 _This time,_ Loki noted in amusement. Jane uncrumpled herself and gripped the piece of birdcage fashioned over the opening of the jar for balance, all the while shaking one tiny fist at Thor and chirping what Loki could only imagine were profanities. While Thor spewed apology after apology, Loki leaned in to study the woman and what his handiwork had done to her. It had been at least two centuries since anyone set off this particular spell, and he was pleased to note the magic had stood the test of time without corruption or decay.

Jane Foster was perhaps half a hand high, and from her back sprouted a pair of pearlescent turquoise wings that flapped till they buzzed whenever her indignant little noises got particularly ferocious. She wore a shoulderless, knee-length dress fashioned from blue flower petals, held together with the finest thread. Loki was quite sure he detected his mother's magic in it.

"The jar is a nice touch. Really emphasizes her mayfly nature, not to mention her place in the house of Odin. Your idea, brother?"

Thor looked up and Jane turned around, and they glared at him in unison.

"It is a safety measure," Thor said. "To keep Freya's cats away and protect her from the currents of the air. The wings your spell gave her are difficult to use. Her flight is ungainly and erratic."

"The wings are perfectly designed. If she can't figure out how to use them, only her own incompetence is to blame," Loki replied flippantly.

Jane spat a single, poisonous squeak his way. Loki repayed her with his most brilliant smile.

Then he turned on his heel and headed back for his cot. "And before you... 'ask'... a third time, no I am not fixing her." He plopped down, folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. "She deserves it for snooping around in my chambers."

"We were not snooping," Thor said defensively, the cadence of his words perfectly mirrored by a series of chitters from Jane. "We were looking for the book on the realms' history you took from the Hall of Knowledge. We have need of it to –"

"This spell was not on any of my _books_."

"And your books were not in anything resembling a logical order! You even have some in your bathtub."

Loki shook his head. "Still snooping."

 _Squeak squeak squi-squi squeak._

He cracked open one eye. "What was that?"

Jane pointed behind her, at Thor, and squeaked slowly and clearly. Not that it mattered one whit.

"Thor told you it was okay, you say?"

She nodded emphatically and made an itty bitty version of 'my most innocent face'.

Loki shrugged and closed his eyes again. "Only makes it worse."

Thor's footsteps approached the cot. Loki recognized the tell-tale sound of a fist being planted in an armored side. Oh joy. Loki contemplated whether to bite if Thor tried to touch him, but no touch came.

"You lost the right to complain when you decided to level half of her nation's capitol. And we wouldn't have had to snoop at all if you hadn't done that and gotten yourself thrown in prison."

"Not my problem. Get someone else to fix it."

"We've tried. Nobody can."

Grinning, Loki opened his eyes just to preen. "Really?"

He knew the exact moment Thor decided to try to butter him up. His obvious tells were almost endearing. (But actually not. Absolutely not.)

"Yes, even father couldn't manage it," Thor said brightly.

Loki raised an eyebrow at Jane. Decidedly less enthused, she crossed her arms over her chest and nodded.

"I am a genius," Loki declared to no-one in particular, and preened some more. (If he knew his not-father at all, at least half of that 'can't' would be more accurately described as 'won't', but Loki had selective reality down to an artform and couldn't care less just then.)

"And surely it would only attest to your unmatched genius more if you proved to all that only you can break the spell – by breaking the spell," Thor suggested with a waggle of eyebrows.

Loki laughed in Thor's face.

Thor sighed. "Loki, please."

"No."

" _Please._ "

"No."

"What can I bribe you with?"

"Oh, you know. My freedom, death and destruction of the fire and ice and dead man's toenails kind, a few choice heads on spikes..."

"Loki, so help me –"

"Oh shush, you're squirming already. Come back when you learn how to threaten me properly."

"She can't stay like this forever, Loki!"

"Of course not. She won't _live_ forever."

Thor pinched the bridge of his nose. Jane opened the little door in her piece of birdcage and leaned out to twitter angrily at him.

"Oh, and I suppose that's my fault too now?" he huffed.

Jane pinched the bridge of her nose too.

"If you won't do it yourself, at least tell us how to reverse the spell so that someone else may."

"Sorry, no can do," Loki said, studying his nails. "Only the creator of the spell can reverse it. _Breaking_ it, however..."

Thor raised his eyebrows expectantly.

With a beatific smile, Loki finished: "That's as simple as a kiss from another fairy."

Thor's face clouded. "There's no such thing as fairies."*

"Present company suggests otherwise."

It had been a while since Thor had last looked like he wanted to beat Loki to a pulp quite so much. It was glorious. And here Loki had been worried visitations from his not-family would result in _feelings_ and other such unpleasantness.

But then, for no discernable reason, Thor blinked and his expression grew shrewd. Not the kind of 'butter Loki up with all the subtlety of a Mjolnir to the cranium' shrewd from before – shrewd as if he truly had just realised a way to twist Loki's metaphorical arm.

Loki didn't like it.

Thor promptly turned on his heel and brought Jane's jar closer to his chest. "Return to your shelter, dear Jane. I know just what to do," he murmured as he walked out of the cell, clear through the magical barrier that locked Loki and his magic in.

He did not look back.

No, Loki did not like this one bit.

 **I-oOo-I**

It took Thor so long to return, though, that Loki dozed off and only realised his not-brother was back when the booming shout of his name awoke him with a start, and the realisation of a projectile about to strike his face triggered a _catch!_ reflex.

Too-suddenly awake and upright on his cot, Loki blinked the sleep from his eyes and shook the tilting from his skull, and stared at the object in his hand.

It was the magical instrument – hand-crafted by himself, one of a kind, revolutionary in its own small way – that had cursed Jane as her greedy, trespassing hands snatched it from its resting place. And the spell protecting it had just hooked its claws into Loki's hand.

 _Impossible,_ he thought.

After that, he only had time to register a sense of betrayal and look up to see his brother's stubbornly determined face and his mother beside him, before the world and his body and all his self dissolved in a rush of magic.

When he came to, he was on his belly, clutching at a strange, ribbed surface, with something dark and entirely too heavy pressing down on him all around. He managed to turn his head and saw woven strands, above and below and all around him, light peeking through intermittently.

 _My pajamas,_ he realised. Rage surged, intertwined with incredulity. _They turned my own spell against me!_

The weight lifted. Light and a potent rush of air washed over him. Then the light dimmed again, to be replaced a moment later by an enormous hand. It dropped something beside him and withdrew.

"PUT THAT ON, DEAR," a slightly terrifying voice boomed. "THERE'S NO NEED TO DO THIS IN THE NUDE."

 _Mother,_ Loki realised, pushing up on his forearms. She'd already made a tiny set of clothes for him to wear as a fairy. She'd agreed to this. She'd _contributed_ to this.

Now _that_ hurt.

"Traitor!" Loki bellowed. "I thought you loved me!"

– or so he intended. What came out instead was the undignified squeaking he'd programmed into his spell. He could understand his own squeaks, could tell that they still meant the words he had meant to speak, but squeaks they were.

 _Trice-damned sodding –_

"I do hope I got the size right?" Frigga asked from somewhere beyond his cave of clothing. "You've lost so much weight since I last fitted you, I was forced to guess as to your current proportions."

Loki wilted.

Eventually he emerged, reluctantly, sulkily. The trousers and sleeveless, low-backed tunic were perfectly fitted and made from green, white-veined leaves. He stubbornly hated how well his mother knew him, because it was impossible to hate her properly _when_ she knew him so well. His wings were green too. At least that was something.

"Are you comfortable?" Frigga asked.

She was gigantic, seated on the edge of his cot. Thor, standing, towered over them both. It was more disconcerting than Loki cared to let on. Arms crossed, shoulders hunched, and scowling for all he was worth, he nodded.

"Don't worry, I made them to expand along with you when you return to your normal size. Neither of you need lose any more dignity over this than you already have. Now –" She nodded to Thor, who leaned down like a mountain folding in half to deposit Jane Foster beside Loki. Frigga then pinned her youngest with a stern gaze. " _Kiss._ "

Loki scowled even harder.

Jane scowled right back. "Just don't think you can try anything funny, buster," she cheeped.

"If you think I'm kissing you at all you are sorely mistaken, _wench_ ," Loki squeak-snapped back.

"Oh, bla bla bla. I'm supposed to believe you'd willingly spend the rest of your life like this just to spite me?"

Loki smirked and jerked his head in Frigga's direction. "That right there is my _mother_ , and she has never denied me anything. Do you really think she'd condemn me to this for long over the likes of _you?_ "

He pointedly refused to wonder quite how much of that was a bluff these days.

"Maybe your mom wouldn't, but your dad's the one who turned your spell around. Good luck with _that_."

Loki's jaw dropped.

Jane grinned like a fiend.

A poke in the back from an enormous finger made Loki stumble.

"Chop chop," Frigga said. "I can keep you company all day if you like, but your brother and Jane have urgent business to attend to."

Loki felt his face heat. 'Need not lose any more dignity than you already have', his arse. He righted himself and glared up at Thor, weighing his options. Kissing Jane would be a momentary annoyance to the lovebirds, but he was in no position to make it any more than that. Forcing her to stay like this for the rest of her life would be so much more satisfying, but it would also cost him more. Granted, the price was mitigated somewhat by the fact that he was already in prison, and the increased size of his cell relative to his body plus the ability to fly would almost be a gain. On the other hand, the odds of that plan being foiled were considerable.

Case in point: Jane lunged for him, evidently having run out of patience already.

Guess the most he could make of this situation was being as much of a nuisance as possible. Fair enough.

Loki side-stepped and shoved Jane along as she shot past him, causing her to stumble and fall flat on her face. Clumsy, untrained woman. But determined; she was back on her feet and rounded on him again in a matter of moments, with fire in her eyes.

Loki smirked. "What's that Earth gesture again?" He pulled down the skin below his eye and stuck out his tongue. "'Catch me if you can!'"

Then he turned tail and ran.

"Loki!" his mother said admonishingly.

Paying her no heed, he pushed off the bed and took to the air.

Well, he _tried_.

Getting the wings to cooperate was a little harder than anticipated. He floundered and flailed his limbs to stay upright and airborne, and silently swore to every god ever invented that he would slowly and painfully murder the first person to throw his words about incompetence back in his face.

One yank on his ankle by a pair of fairy-sized hands was enough to send him crashing face-first into his bedding.

"Perfectly designed, huh?" Jane gloated above him. "'Only my own incompetence'?"

Slowly. Painfully.

Loki rolled onto his back, took stock of his position, of Thor and Frigga high above, hands poised ready to strike. Jane threw herself upon him. Smirking, Loki drew his knees up to his breast and kicked her in the chest with enough force to send her flying.

 _Really_ flying, though, was an instinct as much as a skill to be mastered. Jane, only just having gained her wings, was not possessed of that instinct. She went sailing over the edge of the bed, with nothing to stop her momentum or break her fall. Her drawn-out shriek only ended when her body hit the ground with a _pock!_ like an exceptionally fat bee slamming into a window.

Thor and Frigga exploded in sound and movement. The jar shattered; the sound was murder on Loki's shrunken eardrums. He breathed in with a cringed, breathed out with a sigh. Oh well. It had been fun while it lasted.

Frigga snatched him up where he lay, the fingers of one hand encircling him from his ankles to his neck, while Thor fell to his knees and waved his hands frantically around and about where Jane lay, and babbled incoherently.

"Loki, what have you done?" his mother whispered, aghast.

"Oh, she's _fine_ ," he said, and rolled his eyes so he'd have an excuse not to look at her.

"I'm okay! I'm okay! Thor, it's fine," Jane's voice sounded.

"See?"

With a cry of relief, Thor scooped his tiny mortal into his hands and raised her up to eye level. Jane was knelt in the cup of his hands, clutching his raised thumb for balance. The petals of her dress weren't even wrinkled.

"I _am_ fine. It didn't even hurt." Her bewildered gaze found Loki.

Loki rolled his eyes again, and didn't meet hers either. "The point of the spell wasn't _murder_. Our strength may have diminished to match our size, but our bodies are as resistant to injury as if we were still aesir-sized."

That didn't diminish her bewilderment. On the contrary. " _Why?_ "

"Why what?"

"Why not – why no murder?"

By this time, his mother had pressed the hand she held him in to her heart and folded the other over it besides, murmuring under her breath. "Oh, thank goodness," and "oh Loki, why would you scare us like that", and other things along those lines. Loki shifted uncomfortably.

"The wanton murder and destruction is a recent development."

Jane gaped at him a moment longer. Then she shook herself, looked up at Thor, and motioned for him to move her closer. Thor reluctantly complied, and Frigga held out Loki. Jane clambered up to him, a dangerous gleam coming into her eyes, and drew back her arm.

Loki's eyes widened. "Don't you dare –"

She dared.

His head snapped around from the force of the slap. Thor and Frigga startled, but Jane withstood the quake.

"I may not be dead, but it still scared the shit out of me, asshole!"

Then she backhanded him.

"And that was for New York."

And another slap.

"And for Puente Antiguo."

"Jane –" Thor tried weakly.

And another.

"For Erik!"

Frigga drew Loki back, but after a wobbly moment's delay, Thor moved with her to keep Jane from falling through the gap between their respective hands. "Er, Jane –"

Another.

"And Coulson."

She raised her hand again "And –"

"OkayJanethat'senough." Barking a nervous laugh, Thor narrowed the cup of his hands and pulled Jane away from Loki.

"Well, that took you!" Loki snapped, glaring up at him.

Thor seemed to get the gist of his squeaking, because he looked defensive and said, "Well, you kind of deserved it."

Frigga sighed. Loki, clasped to her bosom again, moved with the rise and fall of her chest. "Yes. Unfortunately, he did." And Loki's face burned again, much to his own chagrin. _Sentiment._ Ugh. "But might I propose that we do what we came here for now, Lady Jane?"

Jane brushed back her hair and smoothed her dress, then breathed deeply and nodded.

"You will pay for this day," Loki ground out, then remembered that he was a prisoner in every sense of the word. " _Somehow._ "

"Quit whining already, you big baby, it didn't even hurt you, any more than it hurt me." That seemed to infuriate her all over again. "It's your own damn fault. None of this would have happened if you'd just undone the spell."

Loki had a retort about snooping and 'your own damn fault' at the ready, but she cut him off by crushing her mouth to his. Loki locked his jaw, squeezed his eyes shut and scrunched up his face, and they stayed like that for a long moment.

Nothing happened.

Jane drew back. "Why isn't anything happening?"

"That... should have worked." Loki frowned. "Let's try again. This time I'll reciprocate."

"If this is some kind of trick –"

"Believe you me, it is _not_."

Jane leaned in again, face dark with suspicion and displeasure. Though hardly kind or pleasant, it was a proper kiss this time. Still nothing happened.

"Something is wrong," Loki admitted.

Jane looked anxious. "It doesn't take a 'true love's kiss' or something like that, does it?"

" _What?_ "

"That's what fairytales on Earth usually say. The spell is broken by the power of true love, and then the prince and the princess live happily ever after."

"That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard," Loki said, mind racing. Changing the creator signature on this spell, ready-made and autonomous as it was, would have been as easy as changing a battery. _Assuming_ that Odin hadn't crossed any of the wrong cosmic forces in doing so, and there was no reason to assume a sorcerer as capable as he would have...

"Brother?" Thor asked worriedly.

Loki looked up and shrugged. The effect was somewhat ruined by the hold his mother still had on his whole body, so Jane spread her arms and repeated the gesture.

"Oh dear," Frigga said. "Loki, if I let you go, will you behave?"

He nodded.

Once free, he studied his hands, looked over his shoulder to inspect his wings, patted his chest – studied the knots and relays of the magic. Nothing seemed to be _broken_ , as such, but...

Realisation hit. He groaned and dropped his head in his hands.

"What?" Jane asked.

"What?" Frigga and Thor chimed in in unison.

Loki spread his arms helplessly. "The magic was just too old. I thought the spell had survived the centuries perfectly preserved, but I was wrong. Natural entropy set in and corroded the – the off-switch, if you will."

Jane's eyes were wide. "That can happen?"

He didn't dignify her with an answer. Instead he turned to Frigga and mimed writing, and shrinking and expanding. His mother, his wonderful, wonderful mother, understood immediately, found his notebook and pen in the pile of books in the corner of the cell, worked some of her own magic, and pushed the writing instruments toward him. They shrunk to a perfect size for his fairy hands, and some minutes later, expanded back to their regular size when he pushed them back toward her.

"If it's just a case of... of a rusted lock, basically, it should be easy to fix. Right?" Jane asked while, with Thor peering over her shoulder, Frigga read the answer he had written down for her.

Loki made a face. "If only."

 **II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

* Alas, because nobody tells the people on his side of the screen anything, Thor was not aware that his universe had been recently merged with Disney's, so that statement promptly killed Tinkerbell. (Kidding, kidding!)


	2. II

_II_

"I could have told them this would happen," Loki remarked casually from where he lounged in his mother's hand. "Scratch that – I _did_ tell them this would happen. I even underlined it. But does anyone ever listen to me? Noooooo. Shut up Loki, Thor will be a perfectly reasonable and levelheaded king. Shut up Loki, we're going to Jotunheim. Shut up Loki, of course Odin will aid you and the mortal."

"To be fair, he's not kidding about needing all his time and energy to fight –"

"Silence, mortal, nobody asked you."

"I'll take self-awareness for two-hundred, Alex," Jane muttered under her breath, and she burrowed a little further into the warm cup of Thor's hand. She loved it when Loki reminded her what an asshole he was, though. It kept her from giving in to the temptation to agree with him and join in on whatever rant he was on at any given moment. So far only half of his rants while Thor and Frigga pled their case with the Allfather had been assholish in and of themselves. It just wasn't right.

Jane briefly contemplated uncrossing her arms just to make sure their postures didn't match. But then she might be tempted to slap him again. Or tear her petal dress to confetti, or gnaw on Thor's fingers. Asgard was bad for her blood pressure.

"Loki could be a valuable ally in the upcoming battle," Thor was currently arguing, and if that wasn't a sign they were grasping at straws, Jane didn't know what was.

"Loki is _in_ this position because he refused to cooperate with something as simple as lifting an old prank spell," Odin countered mercilessly. "Putting him in the middle of our conflict would be akin to wrapping a fire viper around your neck to ward off the evening chill."

Jane couldn't have said it better herself if she knew what a fire viper was. Now if only Odin wasn't making that argument as part of his staunch refusal to lift another finger to help her _or_ Loki.

"Darling," Frigga started soothingly, but Odin cut her off by banging his spear with a sound like cannonfire. Jane almost jumped straight out of Thor's hand. He and Frigga – and even Loki – snapped to attention.

Odin stood from his enormous golden throne. All the better to tower over them with. "Enough! I warned you to take Jane Foster back where she came from, that this was not the time and place for dalliances with mortals. The consequences of your stubbornness are on your own heads. As for Loki, he has summarily squandered his natural given right to _anyone's_ sympathies, least of all those of his king. The form they find themselves in poses no immediate threat to their lives or wellbeing, and with this attack looming on the horizon, I and the masters of magic have better things to do than tend to every scraped knee and burst pipe. You will put those two in a bird cage or a sunroom or _somewhere_ out of the way, and you will go back to what you were supposed to be doing until we are no longer _at war_. THAT IS AN ORDER."

For a long moment there was silence, filled only with Jane's thought of, _And I thought_ surgeons _made for bad in-laws._

Then Thor pressed his unoccupied fist to his heart, bowed at the waist, and rumbled, "Yes, my king," and would it ever stop being terrifying to have a giant fold up on her head?!

Oblivious to Jane's frazzled nerves, he turned to Frigga, who was busy staring Odin down. Books were being written in the contortions of his parents' respective eyebrows.

"Your dad –" Jane said, letting the temptation to talk smack under Odin's nose because he couldn't hear her anyway – she could barely hear _herself_ over the hammering of her heart – get the better of her. "– has an amazing knack for making even a perfectly reasonable argument sound like the most insulting thing in the world. I agree with every– well, over half the things he said, anyway, and still I just want to tell him _'no you'_ and smack that superiority complex off his – oh god, I want to smack an old man, this is terrible."

She was ninety-five percent sure Loki was about to burst out laughing, but just then Odin broke eye contact with his wife to skewer Jane with his one-eyed gaze and thunder, "WHAT WAS THAT?"

By the time Jane was done having a heart attack, Loki sure wasn't grinning _with_ her.

She shook her head and waved her arms 'no', then pointed between herself and Loki and made deflective gestures in Odin's direction. _I was talking to him, not you. Please resume your lovers' spat._ Odin narrowed his eye at her, but eventually turned back to Frigga.

"And you showed such eloquence for a while there, too," Loki drawled.

Jane looked at him from the corner of her eyes. "And here Thor almost had me convinced your daddy issues came from being too _un_ like your father."

"Very well," Frigga suddenly said, all impish smiles. "I will return to what I am _supposed_ to be doing, as a wife and mother. Which is to entertain our guests and look after our children. I will take Loki and the lady Jane to the flower safehouse, out of harm's way, where I will have ample time to work on a solution to their little problem."

"You're _leaving?_ " Thor said incredulously.

"We all have our duties to fulfill in times of need, and this is mine."

"But you are also our _queen_."

"Long ago, your father and I came to an agreement. Queens and fathers get to delegate; mothers and kings do not," she said. "Now, Thor, say your goodbyes to the lady. I will take good care of her, and she will be back to her old self in no time." She hooked her free arm into Thor's and raised her eyebrows at Odin. "By your leave, of course, my king?"

Odin's beard trembled. His face was unreadable.

"Go," he said in a strangled voice.

"Excellent! Mind your hip when you go into battle, dear. I eagerly await word of your victory."

She steered Thor away. Thor kept sending uncertain glances over his shoulder, until Odin cheerfully called after them: "Go, before I change my mind and throw your mother in the dungeons for cheek!"

"It'll be like a family outing," Frigga said happily as she and Thor carried their tiny passengers through the labyrinthine golden hallways of Gladsheim. "Or a study trip."

"Oh god," Jane groaned. "This is not fair, you guys aren't even my in-laws yet."

"Word will be Asgard's queen fled and deserted her people," Thor said in a low voice.

"Word will be wrong," Frigga replied, unconcerned. "She leaves Asgard's fate in the hands of her eldest so she can protect the future that lies beyond this battle."

Thor's brow furrowed. "Future?"

"Future?" Jane parroted, though the answer came to her the moment she turned it into a question.

Sure enough, Loki made a disgusted sound. "Planning the wedding already?"

" _No._ " Jane's cheeks burned, and she looked up at Thor for confirmation.

"Perhaps a baby shower?"

Thor seemed to find his own suspicions confirmed on Jane's face, because he shook his head frantically at Frigga. "No, mother, we do not yet have any such intentions. It is not the custom of Jane's people to –"

"And of course I'm not invited to either, am I?"

"Dude, there's _not_ going to be a wedding."

"There are dates that must be passed, you see, or had, I'm not quite sure – milestones of some sort, and with everything that has happened Jane says she and I have not been able to –"

"Not what I meant," Frigga corrected delicately.

"Oh."

"Oh."

"Oh."

"They should not be forced to live out their lives not whole and happy, is all I mean. It would not be fair to the prospects of either realm _or_ themselves. Though I am ready to be a grandmother whenever you are. Either of you. Just saying."

"Well, sorry to disappoint you even more," Loki muttered darkly.

"How do you even know what a baby shower is?" Jane asked, somewhat mollified but studiously ignoring those last bits.

"What, you think we don't have them? A birth is a _rare_ and _joyous_ occasion," Loki mocked. "The whole realm is invited. They even held one for _me_ , though the Norns only know where everyone found the time to think of what to give when I suddenly popped up out of nowhere," he trailed off sullenly.

Frigga stopped in front of a vaguely familiar set of doors, as shiny and oversized and golden as everything else in the palace. Reminding Thor to tell Jane goodbye, she entered. The gust of air that enveloped Jane as the doors opened was more than just _vaguely_ familiar. She would remember that mixture of herbs and parchment, battle gear before the blood and mud ruined it, and _magic_ of Loki's rooms, for the rest of her life. And in the moment the scent of them washed over her, Jane felt genuinely sorry for him for not being allowed to ever return to them.

Then he exclaimed, "WHAT DID YOU BRUTES DO TO MY CHAMBERS?!", and she had to bite her thumb to keep from laughing.

Loki's irritability brought out the worst in her in all kinds of delightful ways, and the best part was, she didn't even feel all that bad about it. Maybe she should hang out with mass-murdering wannabe warlords more often.

Thor raised her up to eye level. "This is where we part ways once more, Jane Foster. It seems the universe is conspiring against us, but I swear to you, once this threat has been vanquished, we _will_ have time to ourselves to perform your people's 'twenty questions' ceremony."

"At this point I'd settle for a quicky against a back alley wall and a magical STD for a souvenir," Jane admitted with a crooked smile, since he couldn't understand the chirps coming out of her mouth anyway. "But that sounds lovely."

Never had a smile so tender been directed her way, and dammit, now she felt guilty. It was almost enough to make her regret all the times she'd gotten distracted sightseeing rather than getting to know Thor since she arrived in Asgard.

Okay, no. No it wasn't.

 _Guilty guilty guilty._

Still, she beckoned him closer and leaned in to press a firm kiss to the tip of his nose.

Thor's face scrunched up and he grinned, eyes squeezed shut. "That tickles."

She stuck her hands in the scruff of his beard and scratched vigorously. His laughter almost blew her away – literally – and thank god Asgardians didn't suffer from bad breath. But he didn't lower his hands, no matter the faces he made.

After a while, Loki's voice came from behind her, and Jane heard the doors close. "I think I might hurl. The only question is, do I do it _before_ I kill you for the mess you made in there, or after?"

"Your brother is so cute, Thor," Jane said, giving his beard one last scritch. "All that bark, even after he's made it so he literally can't even hurt me with his bite."

"We'll see about that yet."

"All his own fault too. We _would_ have put everything back where we found it, but suddenly I was three inches tall!"

Thor finally lowered her and sighed. "Goodbye then. Be safe, Jane, mother, Loki. Look after one another."

He exchanged Jane for the book. Thor's gaze lingered on Loki until Loki made a gesture Jane didn't recognize but which, from the look on his face, could only have been rude, and Thor's shoulders slumped. Frigga made a 'what can you do?' face and caressed his cheek. Then, after a few last parting words, Thor strode off in one direction and the queen in another.

"First a library key, then the guest rooms to gather Jane's things... My own chambers... and perhaps a new jar would be prudent..." she muttered under her breath.

Jane and Loki began twittering in indignant tandem.

"Alright, _two_ jars."

 **I-oOo-I**

By analyzing the energy and particle disturbance left by the recent Bifrost activity, Jane and her team back home had pinpointed the location of Asgard relative to Earth, so if anything happened to her there or she got stranded somehow, her own people at least had a good lead to follow in search of her. But Loki and Frigga refused to tell her anything about where in the universe their 'flower safehouse' was located, because 'that would defeat the point of it'. This bothered Jane to an irrational degree (she couldn't send a change-of-address message back to Earth anyway), right until the three of them actually arrived.

The royal hideaway was _breathtaking_. There were woods stretching in every direction up and down the slopes of gently rolling hills, a majestic mountain range in the distance, pale, pastel-tinted bodies of various sizes in the clear blue afternoon sky, a horizon Jane could swear was visibly curved, a cottage straight from a fairytale, a babbling brook that looked legally obligated to house at least five water sprites, birdsong from every direction, and – as the 'flower safehouse' monicker suggested – flowers. Flowers _everywhere_. Their scent was so thick it made Jane's mouth water and her head reel.

As Frigga walked them up the cottage's close to overgrown garden path, Jane took deep, steadying breaths of that intoxicating smell. Steadying. _Steadying_ , dammit.

Her stomach growled.

"Loki. _Why_ does the smell of flowers make me hungry."

"Because they are part of your natural diet now."

"God damn you."

Loki shrugged. "'Tis how the stories go, is it not? Fairies are as bees or butterflies. They live off of milk and honey, sweets and fruits, nectar and pollen."

" _Pollen?_ Ew," Jane groaned. Except half of her thought a mouthful of flower powder actually sounded delicious. She made a mental note to stay far away from all things flowery. "You put _way_ too much thought into this stupid prank."

"I did not become one of the greatest sorcerers in the Nine Realms by _not_ practicing my craft."

"Nor did you become the universe's greatest jerk by practicing on anything _useful_."

"Don't think I cannot tell when you are bickering, children," Frigga said, putting the spice rack holding them down on the cottage's dinner table. "Is this really how you wish to spend your time here? Fighting until you drop?"

Loki scribbled something in his notebook and passed it on to his mother.

"'Trying not to bicker is the more tiring option'," she read aloud.

Jane and Loki nodded fervently.

Frigga heaved a deep, deep sigh.

 **I-oOo-I**

"So how long do you think this is gonna take?" Jane asked that night. She was sitting on the edge of one of the many huge books stacked on the dining table, swinging her legs with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.

Frigga had unpacked their things, readied the cottage for habitation, and art-craft-and-magicked together a pair of doll-sized boxbeds for Jane and Loki, which now stood one each on the little night tables on either side of her bed. Then, using what she called a 'library key', she had started pulling giant dusty tomes and scrolls out of thin air. Jane had been _all over_ those – literally – but the texts were all written in runes, and of all the eclectic Old Norse-y things Jane had studied in the months After Thor, Futhark sadly was not one.

Right now, Loki and Frigga were examining a projection of Loki's energy signature Loki had conjured up with what remained of his powers. The strength of his magic had shrunk right along with his physical strength. And, it would seem, his patience. Jane really didn't think she'd asked _that_ many questions or been all _that_ annoying before he went for her throat and only Frigga's fast reflexes had kept them from starting an all out brawl.

A part of Jane she had never known existed before Loki waltzed into her life had been disappointed. Provoking another fight wasn't why she took up her questioning again, though. She was just bored out of her skull.

"I mean, are we thinking days or weeks or months here, or what?"

"We won't know until we determine the extent of the damage," Loki answered curtly.

"And how long is _that_ gonna take?"

"Here's a better question: what will it take to shut you up?"

"Something to do! Are you sure you don't have _anything_ in the Roman alphabet in your library?"

Loki looked up from his work to give her a fierce, unfriendly look. They stared each other down for several long moments before Loki sneered, pulled his notebook toward himself, and started writing something down.

"Come here, mortal," he said, making an imperious 'heel' motion with his free hand.

Jane crossed her arms. "Say please."

"Come here or I will leave you to your boredom," he snapped.

It was a close call, but curiosity won out over indignation in the end. Jane almost started berating herself for her lack of self-respect before she remembered that her curiosity would always win out over _anything_ and that she had made her peace with that fact a long time ago. So she hopped off of her book and crouched down beside Loki.

He slid the notebook toward her and handed her the pen. One page held a column of single runes.

He pointed to the topmost one and said, "Ffff."

Jane stared.

Loki glared. "Write it down in your Roman characters. This one is pronounced _fff_."

Jane's face lit up, but she didn't even care. Loki pronounced the runes one by one, and Jane wrote down the romanizations. Then Loki tore that page from the notebook to give to her and scribbled something new to his mother, who read it, chewed her lip thoughtfully, and spent the next few minutes grabbing at thin air with her library key while Jane eagerly started memorizing characters. Eventually Frigga conjured up the thickest tome yet, worked her shrinking magic, and handed it to Jane.

"This is a beginner's guide to the lore and principles of magic," Frigga said. "A children's book, really, but the best starting point one could hope for. It is written in Alltongue, so once you know the script, you will know the language."

"Are you _serious?_ " Jane felt like she might cry for gratitude. "Oh my god, thank you so much! Thank you thank you thank you thank you!"

Frigga smiled. "It was my son's idea."

Jane stilled. Took a deep breath. Turned to Loki, who had already returned to studying his projection.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're so smart, are you?" he scoffed, not looking at her. "Then prove it. Make yourself useful, if you can."

Jane's goodwill evaporated instantly. "I have _nothing_ to prove to the likes of _you_."

"I thought so."

Clutching her new treasure to her chest and shaking her head incredulously, Jane stood. "You know, of all the things I like about you, your habit of shooting yourself in the foot is probably my favorite."

 _Now_ he looked at her – like she'd grown a second head.

"You think on that," she said with a grin, and headed for the other end of the table.

Hours later, Frigga very gently prodded Jane. "It's getting quite late, dear, and you've had a long, troubling day. You should sleep. The book isn't going anywhere."

"I'm fine," Jane said, shaking her head at Frigga with a quick, absentminded smile. "I'm way too pumped to sleep just yet. You guys go to bed, I'll be alright."

"Are you sure? Shall I give you a lift to the night table? It's quite a ways to fly on those wobbly wings."

"No thanks!"

"Leave the mortal be, mother. The longer she sleeps in tomorrow morning, the more peace and quiet we shall have."

Jane grinned into her pages. "It's the least I can do to thank you for giving me this great gift of knowledge instead of Vogon poetry or the Asgardian version of Twilight or some other abomination against literature."

Loki's footsteps froze behind her. "Oh. So _that's_ what 'shot in the foot' means."

 **I-oOo-I**

The next morning, Jane woke up with her face glued to the table and her book draped over her like a blanket.

It was almost like being back in college.

She used to think deadline panic was the greatest motivator in the universe. She'd done her fair share of putting off papers and reports until the last moment; she was only human. But then a pair of aliens dropped a magic handbook and a foreign alphabet in her lap, and Jane found out she had been wrong.

She got functionally proficient in Asgardian runes in a matter of days. After two weeks, it felt like she'd been reading them her whole life. If someone had asked her two or three years ago whether she was capable of such a feat, she would have laughed in their face. Because she didn't have a book about the science behind _magic_ in her lap two or three years ago.

She read the book front to cover, and then again, tuning Loki and Frigga out completely as she did. Then she read it another time. And another. And another, until she could recite the contents by heart. She was on her sixth read and her second notebook of Earth physics vs Asgard magic comparisons, ready to ask for more sophisticated, in-depth material once she finished this last round of memorizing, when Loki's voice cut through the blissful haze of Enlightenment In Progress.

"All this time, and you still have yet to try out your new wings. I know it must boggle the mind to realize how truly primitive your race's understanding of the universe is, but I feel almost offended."

And yeah, that did a good job _cutting_ , alright.

For days, a lifetime's worth of bookworm-based grief had been whispering in Jane's ear that a normal person would be outside right now, in the sun, immersing herself while she could in the unique, once in a lifetime, universally coveted experience of being able to fly – not cramming on the same book over and over. Her access to Asgard's knowledge would outlast her possession of wings, surely.

"Fuck off," she told Loki ever so eloquently. "Talk about your skills and craftsmanship all you want, but those wings are a pain to use. And your spell's in such a sorry condition I wouldn't be surprised if they fall off the moment I get some altitude, anyway."

Which was a poor excuse, but not a _lie_.

Loki smirked. "Your loss."

He turned on his heel and took to the air with the speed, surity and grace of a hummingbird.

Jane's jaw dropped. Loki turned on his axis in mid-air, threw her a jaunty salute, somersaulted, and zipped off through the open door of the cottage.

 _Son of a gun,_ she thought, feeling her cheeks warm. No, feeling her entire _head_ come to a boil. Such show-off-manship was a taunt. A challenge.

"Frigga, I'm going out," Jane declared in a chirp so close to a growl it was a purr, and slammed her book shut.

Smiling conspiratorially, Frigga helped her off the table and waved goodbye. "Go get him, dear."


End file.
